Mr Campion's Fault (6 page)

‘As a matter of fact, she almost did.’

‘That sounds like Hilda,’ acknowledged the wing commander without irony. ‘When she wants to go somewhere she just puts her head down and goes full steam ahead. Doesn’t matter what’s in her way; could be a baby in a pram, could be a blind man with one leg, could be a brick wall – Hilda would go through or over the lot. Bertram always said he could use her on the rugby field if she put on three or four stones. Mind you, she probably will. Spinsters usually do.’

Perdita bit her lip and resisted the urge to reach out and rip off a chunk of those yellowing moustache hairs. ‘I’m told that Hilda is to play a part in the production I have … inherited.’

‘And the best of British luck to you with that, little lady. This damn-fool Christmas show was all Hilda’s damn-fool idea from the start, wasn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite follow, Mr Bland,’ said Perdita, conscious of Rupert next to her moving uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He had seen her far from feminine response to being called anyone’s ‘little lady’ before.

‘I prefer Wing Commander, if you don’t mind,’ said the pompous lion. ‘That’s why Celia calls me the SBO of the staff room – Senior British Officer, don’t you know.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Perdita said innocently. ‘I thought it stood for something else entirely. Could I ask what you mean by the
Faustus
production being Hilda’s idea, Wing Commander? I didn’t realize she was on the staff.’

‘She’s not, thank the stars. She haunts the school – on sufferance, mind you – because she was Bertram’s sister. No one in Denby Ash, or the adjoining parishes, can stand the woman – me included – but Bertie was a good friend of mine and since he died I seem to have inherited the role of Hilda expert by default.’

The wing commander’s expression twisted in on itself as he concentrated silently on picking flecks of tobacco from his pursed lips whilst studiously ignoring the young woman in front of him. Perdita was sure she was not the first of her sex to be so ignored and would not be the last. But as she was determined not to stand for bullying in the classroom, she saw no reason why she should put up with it in the staff room.

‘Well?’ she said, placing her clenched fists on her hips and leaning over the seated lion.

‘Well what?’ growled the startled lion, already betrayed by a pink glow blooming in his cheeks.

‘Why was doing
Faustus
Hilda’s idea? I thought you were about to tell me.’

‘Oh, yes … Hilda and her
Doctor Faustus
obsession …’

Raymond Bland paused as if reluctant to part with information which, Perdita was sure, would have been common gossip in the all-male sanctuary of an officer’s mess.

‘I must confess,’ Perdita admitted with a smile designed, if not to charm, then at least suggest complicity, ‘I thought it a distinctly odd choice for a Christmas production when I first heard.’

‘Hrrumph!’ growled the lion. ‘Bloody odd, if you’ll pardon my French; we all thought that, but then Hilda is a distinctly odd woman. She took Bertie in, you know, when his wife died. She got killed in a road accident as well, just like Bertie. Funny that; ’cept of course it’s not. Bertie was broken up about it and seriously in danger of cracking up, so it was probably for the best that he had Hilda to take care of him. Not that she ever let him forget it. Always on about how she’d given up any hope of bagging a husband to look after him.’

And now the lion snorted.

‘Fat chance there was of that happening, mind you, but it had the desired effect on Bertie. Made him feel guilty, so he indulged her; took her to the pictures in Leeds and the theatre in Stratford-on-Avon, of all places.’

‘I hardly think it indulgent—’ Perdita began to bristle, but her husband intervened soothingly.

‘Stratford would be where she saw the RSC doing
Doctor Faustus
last year, wouldn’t it? You know, darling, with Eric Porter as Dr F and all the fuss there was about a nude Helen of Troy.’

The wing commander, happier to be talking to a man, purred with enthusiasm. ‘Spot on, old chap, and you’re dead right: that Helen of Troy was totally nude – completely starkers – not like those gals at The Windmill. I know some of them couldn’t muster a fig leaf between them, but at least they didn’t move. Hilda was much taken with the production, almost smitten you might say, but then she’d had a thing about
Faustus
since she saw the film the year before. You know, the one with Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. I don’t know if Liz was starkers in it. Never saw it meself.’

Bland leaned back in his chair with the air of a man who has put down a heavy suitcase and looked up at Perdita, mildly surprised to see that she was still there.

‘You know what women can be like,’ he said patronizingly. ‘They get totally obsessed by things. Hilda nagged Bertie until he agreed to do the damn play, and once he’d agreed she appropriated the role of Helen for herself. The headmaster laid down the law, though: no nudity, so she won’t be starkers, thank God!’

‘She wants to go ahead despite her brother’s death?’ Rupert asked quickly, sensing that the steam valve controlling Perdita’s temper was close to bursting.

‘More so than ever. I told you, the woman’s obsessed. She wants the show dedicated to Bertie’s memory. Not much of a legacy if you ask me.’

‘I’m sure no one will,’ interjected Celia Armitage, riding to the rescue once more. ‘Now I really must drag Perdita away as Mr Cawthorne needs a word and you’ll be wanting to get off home, Raymond, won’t you?’

She emphasized her point by tapping a fingernail against the face of her wristwatch.

‘Quite right, Celia,’ agreed the wing commander, getting sharply to his feet. ‘Mustn’t keep the memsahib waiting; always has my tea on the table bang on half-past five.’

Perdita gratefully allowed herself to be pulled out of the wing commander’s orbit and she acknowledged Mrs Armitage’s gentle squeezing of her arm by leaning even closer into her and whispering, ‘I just knew there had to be a memsahib …’

Celia Armitage offered a complicit smile and steered her towards the Cawthornes. Rupert said a polite goodbye to the wing commander, who was more interested in delving into his pockets to locate his car keys, and followed his wife, only to have his arm gently touched – blessed, almost – by the Rev. Huxtable.

‘Can I have a word, Campion?’

‘Of course, as long as it’s not about the
Faustus
production or …’ He had been about to say ‘naked spinsters’ but checked himself at the sight of a looming dog collar.

‘Oh, no, my concerns are not theatrical,’ said the beaming dog collar, ‘more pastoral, really. I want to give you some advice, or perhaps it is a favour I’m asking.’

‘Any and all advice would be gratefully received,’ Rupert said politely, though secretly dreading a lecture on schoolboy morals.

‘It’s about a boy.’ The Rev. Huxtable gently tapped his right temple with the stem of his pipe as though dislodging a memory. ‘He’s in my Form but you’ll have him out on the rugby field – his name is Andrew Ramsden and he’s pleasant enough and certainly bright enough. I’d like you to keep an eye on him.’

‘So what’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing at all – he’s a fine boy. It could be, though, that he’s being …’

‘Bullied?’ suggested Rupert.

‘Oh, no, not bullied.’ Mr Huxtable now used his pipe, thankfully unlit, as a conductor’s baton to make a more emphatic finger-wagging gesture. ‘I think the word is “shunned”, by the other boys and the villagers and – dare I say? – perhaps by one or two of the more left-wing masters as well.’

Rupert remembered he was supposed to be an actor and managed to suppress his imagination running away with the image of a socialist fifth column inside Ash Grange.

‘What has he done?’

‘Andrew? Nothing, poor lad. It’s his father, who’s a policeman, who has been snooping around the village and the school recently, asking a lot of silly questions. People don’t like that sort of thing.’

‘He’s not investigating Bertram Browne’s death, is he?’

‘What a curious conclusion to jump to,’ said the reverend gentleman, his eyes popping behind his spectacles. ‘Bertram’s death was a road accident pure and simply. Tragic, of course. What they call a hit-and-run, I think. No, Chief Inspector Ramsden is investigating something completely different; something which you might say goes into the very soul of Denby Ash.’

‘Really? That sounds quite disturbing.’

‘Please don’t let it disturb you, my dear chap. It should not concern you, or this school, for that matter.’

Perhaps Huxtable had said too much, in which case Rupert could not resist teasing him. ‘And yet the very soul of the village is at stake?’ He feigned surprise. ‘That sounds awfully serious, though as we drove in here today we saw you are well supplied with churches of various denominations to cater for any souls in danger.’

The Rev. Stanley Huxtable allowed himself a thin smile. ‘You are very observant, young man. We are indeed fortunate here in Denby Ash to have a good, solid parish church, albeit one that is as High as you can go in the Church of England without being Roman, and we are blessed with several versions of Methodism, ranging from the austere to the downright strict. So we have quite a little army of vicars, preachers, lay preachers and missionaries here. But that’s not the best of it.’

Huxtable’s eyes positively twinkled behind his glasses as he paused for dramatic effect. ‘We even have a witch.’

A
lthough a born and bred Yorkshireman of the West Riding, which everyone knows produces the hardiest
genus
of Yorkshire, Detective Chief Inspector Dennis Ramsden had never felt entirely comfortable when his duties had taken him out into the rural mining villages. In his years as a policeman in Huddersfield, he had diligently taken statements from three streets’ worth of back-to-back houses where every adult had worked in the same well-insured textile mill which had mysteriously burned to the ground, resolved complicated matters of family honour among proud Indian families, investigated a serious assault on a group of young Pakistani girls almost too frightened to breathe and arrested, single-handed, a gang of flamboyant Polish burglars. Yet despite his experience and proven diplomatic skills, Dennis Ramsden had always felt like, if not a fish out of water, then a fish in a strange river whenever his duties took him into a mining community such as Denby Ash, dominated as it was by the black mountainous spoil heap of the defunct Grange Ash colliery – an ancient society’s monument to a forgotten god.

It almost was a foreign country – a ridiculous fancy really as his son was a pupil at Ash Grange School, which should allow him at least proxy visiting rights if not a tourist visa or work permit. He knew that Brigham Armitage’s school was tolerated as a curious adjunct rather than an integral part of the village. For the majority of Denby Ash’s population, the local school was the small Church of England Primary – invariably known as ‘the Infants’ – whereas Ash Grange was an isolated example of ancient privilege which just happened to be located nearby. For many it was of no more or no less significance or interest than having a ruined Norman castle in the neighbourhood.

But that was miners for you. They kept themselves to themselves and everyone else at arm’s length. If they weren’t die-hard members of the National Union of Mineworkers they were die-hard members of the village brass band. More often than not they were both.

The man who Ramsden had come to Denby Ash to interview was both, albeit now retired, and he also had personal reasons for not wanting to talk to policemen.

Ramsden knew enough of the cultural protocols of mining villages not to use the front door of Number 17, Oaker Hill. Front doors were reserved for distant relatives visiting at Christmas or when there had been a death in the house (with the body laid out in the front room) and the undertakers needed a dignified point of entry and exit. Back doors were for family, neighbours, doctors on a house call, meter readers, rag-and-bone men ‘on the knock’, insurance men, the lad who collected the pools coupons every week, the rent man and, if absolutely necessary, the itinerant policeman.

‘Good morning, Mrs Bagley,’ he said to the sharp-faced woman who opened the door at his first knock. ‘I’d like a word with you and your husband. Is he in?’

‘Where else would he be?’ the woman snapped as if Ramsden had suggested something outrageous. She turned her back on her visitor and shouted ‘Walter!’ into the house, then held the door open and flapped a hand, waving Ramsden in. ‘Get indoors before the neighbours get to know all our business.’

The policeman felt sure that particular horse had bolted long ago. Gossip spread like a slow incoming tide through these rows of thin-walled terraced houses even without the pull of a three-year-old scandal which everyone in Denby Ash was well aware of.

The back door of Number 17, as in every other ‘pit house’ on Oaker Hill, opened directly into the kitchen. Ramsden extend his leg to stride over the scoured white edge of the stone doorstep, as a brief glimpse of Mrs Bagley’s reddened hands told him that she had only recently completed that particular domestic chore. Putting an inch-wide edge on a slab of stone doorstep with a white, cream or (daringly) brown donkey stone had always seemed a rather pointless cosmetic ritual to Dennis Ramsden, but then he was a man and intelligent enough not to pick a fight with Doreen Bagley in her own domain, or indeed any Yorkshire woman.

‘It’s that copper from Huddersfield again,’ she announced him. ‘Likely it’ll be about our Haydon.’

There was a grunt of resignation from the corner where Walter Bagley sat in a green upright Parker Knoll armchair which had seen better days, most of them in the previous decade. It was the only armchair in the kitchen and clearly Walter Bagley’s throne, drawn up next to the iron fireplace in which a coal fire glowed like lava in a volcano, throwing out enough heat for Walter to be comfortable in shirt-sleeves and braces. At knee-height for the utmost convenience, a metal goblet shape had been welded to the iron fire surround and held a splay of multi-coloured paper spills. Ramsden knew what they were, but had assumed they had become extinct when electricity had removed the need for gas lights and candles. Before he deigned to speak to his visitor, Walter Bagley demonstrated their usefulness by selecting a spill, lighting it from the fire and using it to ignite a cigarette. Only when he had extinguished the spill by knocking it out on the grate and placing the unburned portion – waste not, want not – back in the holder and exhaled a stream of grey smoke did he look up into the face of the policeman.

‘If tha’s got summat to say, tha’d better get it said, ’cos I’ve got nowt to tell thee.’

‘Now then, Walter, I’m only doing my job.’

‘Not much of a job, if you ask me, bothering folk – and it’s “Mr Bagley”, if you don’t mind.’

‘Walter! It costs nowt to be civil,’ Mrs Bagley chided her husband but left Ramsden under no illusions that he was dealing with two hostile witnesses.

‘I was in Denby Ash anyway, so I thought I would call in and ask about Haydon,’ the policeman admitted. ‘Have you had any contact with him?’

Walter Bagley flicked ash from his cigarette into the fire and his eyes stayed on the burning coals. ‘I’ve not seen Haydon since the trial and I only went to that on sufferance after a lot of nagging from some people.’ He did not turn his head from the fire but it was clear where that particular shaft was aimed. ‘The wife went to visit him in prison, though I never saw what good that did.’

‘The trial was nearly three years ago, Mr Bagley,’ said Ramsden. ‘I was wondering if he had been in touch in the past two weeks.’

‘Since he got out, you mean?’

‘Exactly. I presume you were aware he was being released early for good behaviour.’

‘Mebbe he was, but I don’t see what it’s got to do with us.’

‘Walter Bagley, how can you say such things?’

Ramsden was surprised by Mrs Bagley’s outburst. Her husband had once had a reputation as something of a martinet: as an active union man, as the bandmaster of Denby Ash Brass Band and a staunch Methodist. Those were the three rods of steel running through Walter Bagley until he was diagnosed with ‘miner’s lung’ and forcibly retired from the pit and the band, leaving only a fervent religiosity which had been tested to breaking point by the actions of his son.

‘He’s no son of mine,’ growled Mr Bagley. Mrs Bagley crossed her arms over her bosom and gave him a defiant, though silent, glare.

Feeling himself the reluctant referee in the middle of two boxers who knew each other’s best punches far too well, Dennis Ramsden considered the events which had disrupted this household and marvelled, not for the first time, at human reaction to criminal events. He had been roundly abused by an angry mother claiming her thuggish son had been a sheep among wolves and as innocent as a dove, even as she sponged someone else’s blood from his shirt. He had been physically assaulted by two brothers who had violently objected to him ending their income from immoral earnings purely on economic grounds rather than the fact that the wage-earner in question was their sister. He had arrested a caring father so keen for his fifteen-year-old son to pass his driving test (when old enough) that he had stolen a variety of cars until he found one that suited. Well, the lad had to get in plenty of practice because he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer and proper lessons from the BSM were too expensive. And there had been the young tearaway biker who had cheerfully admitted to driving over the foot of a uniformed constable on traffic duty, his defence being that he couldn’t have possibly avoided the policeman: ‘Not at the speed I was doing!’

To the crimes of Haydon Bagley, however, the reaction had been sociological. He had joined the Yorkshire Penny Bank, as it was then, on leaving school and over fifteen years had progressed from spotty youth nervously straightening ten shilling notes and fumbling blue cloth bags of pennies and halfpennies behind a wire grill to smart-suited junior manager of his own branch: the lord of all he surveyed, or at least all the overdrafts and mortgages he surveyed. Having the name Bagley, which came with all the prestige due to a firebrand union official and a stalwart of the brass band, ensured that there would never be a shortage of clients seeking chequebooks and savings accounts. In addition, the name brought Haydon the honourable offices of treasurer for the Denby Ash band, the Parish Council and the village branch of the Co-Op, which also put him in charge of numerous Christmas clubs, charity appeals and holiday funds.

Sadly, Haydon Bagley was not an honourable man.

It was an internal audit by the Yorkshire Bank which raised the first suspicion, quickly followed, domino-like, by close examination of the financial ledgers of every organization, church, chapel, charity and savings clubs which had been touched by Haydon Bagley’s sticky fingers. The amounts found to be missing were never large in themselves and some so small they had easily been accepted as arithmetical errors, but over the years the syphoned shillings had provided Haydon with an annual package holiday from Manchester airport to a destination even more exotic, as well as a new car every two years. With hindsight, such conspicuous consumption should have given him away earlier, but it was inconceivable to the inhabitants of Denby Ash that one of their own could steal from them.

When Haydon Bagley was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment at Wakefield Crown Court, the inhabitants of Denby Ash organized a series of jumble sales, flower and vegetable shows, Beetle Drives and bingo nights (thus making allowances for all religious persuasions) to make up the eroded holiday fund to ensure that all children under the age of eleven had their annual coach trips to Flamingo Park zoo and a day at the Scarborough seaside. Yet for all the rally-round enthusiasm generated and the cooperation between bodies who had never cooperated on anything in their history, the prevailing mood in Denby Ash was one of shame.

In the Bagley household, that mood persisted.

‘It’s no more than God’s truth,’ Walter Bagley challenged his wife. ‘He’s not my son just as he’s not your son either, Doreen.’

Whilst Mrs Bagley remained, arms folded, as animated as a Mount Rushmore carving, her husband looked up from his chair at the policeman, his eyes steely and biblical.

‘Doreen can’t have kids but wanted summat to keep her occupied,’ he said in a dark monotone, ‘so we adopted Haydon as a bairn. If there’s bad blood in him, it’s not our blood.’

‘Mr Bagley,’ said Ramsden gently, ‘I am only interested in Haydon’s movements since his release, and all I need to know is if he has contacted you.’

‘That’s not likely, is it? I made it very clear to him that this was not a house where sinners could take refuge.’

‘Yes, you made that very clear, Walter,’ said Mrs Bagley defiantly.

‘And he hasn’t tried to get in touch; a letter, perhaps, or a phone call? Are you on the phone here?’

‘Oh, yes, we had the telephone put in years ago.’ At last there was something Mrs Bagley could be proud of.

‘There’s many a time I wish we hadn’t,’ sniped her husband. ‘Every lazy so-and-so in the row comes traipsing through the ’ouse to use it when it’s raining and they can’t be bothered to walk to the phone box.’

‘Charity, Walter, charity,’ his wife soothed; then, remembering the policeman in the room: ‘But Haydon hasn’t rung. I think he’d know better than to ring here.’

Walter Bagley threw his cigarette end like a dart into the fire, sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, signalling that the interview was at an end.

‘Then mebbe he’s learned summat in prison.’

Rupert and Perdita had eventually escaped the Dragons’ Den to the room they had been allocated in the Lodge, a large redbrick house where the upper floor and the loft space had been converted into a barracks for the thirty boarders, over whom Celia Armitage ruled with a benevolent ruthlessness.

The ground floor had been converted into two self-contained flats, the larger one being the domestic lair of the Armitages, the smaller one reserved for guests, temporary staff or recruited staff new to the area – the Campions qualifying on all three counts. Their flat had a private bathroom but no kitchen facilities beyond an electric kettle on a tray, a bowl of sugar, a jar of teabags and two spoons. Celia Armitage explained that they would be expected to take their meals in the school dining hall in Ash Grange which was always ‘something of a maelstrom’ at lunchtime but quite civilized at tea time when only the boarders were present. The Campions were, naturally, able to enjoy a cup of tea whenever the need arose and Mrs Armitage promised to send the school cook over with a gill of milk to keep them going.

When they were left alone to their unpacking, Rupert said, ‘Did the headmaster’s wife just promise to bring us a female ferret?’

‘No, my darling idiot, that’s jill with a “j”. Celia said she would give us a gill, with a “g”. That’s a measurement of liquid, a quarter of a pint, I believe, though in Yorkshire they call half-pints of milk gills just to confuse southerners.’

‘Does it work for half-pints of beer?’ Rupert grinned.

‘Only if it confuses southerners,’ said Perdita, deadpan. ‘That seems to be the rule about most things and should you – a full-grown male – ask for anything as dainty as a half-pint of beer round here, I think you deserve everything you get.’

Rupert grasped his wife’s hand and clutched it to his manly bosom, striking his most melodramatic pose. ‘My dearest, promise me you’ll never leave my side whilst we are here, not for a minute. Promise me.’